Owing to this calamity, however, the stores on the north bank were wellnigh run out of their usual stock, but I was amazed to find such luxuries of life as eau de Cologne, scented soaps, ladies’ boots and shoes, and brightly coloured skirts.  Leaving the small river township—­the embryo Livingstone—­we followed a very sandy road uphill till we reached the summit of Constitution Hill, already mentioned.  There our buggy and two small, well-bred ponies swept into a smartly-kept compound surrounded by a palisade, the feature of the square being a flagstaff from which the Union Jack was proudly fluttering.  As a site for a residence Constitution Hill could not well be surpassed, and many a millionaire would cheerfully have given his thousands to obtain such a view as that which met our eyes from the humble huts, and held me enthralled during the whole of my stay.  It must be remembered we had been travelling, since leaving the rail-head, eighty miles north of Bulawayo, through a thickly wooded and mountainous country where any extensive views were rare.  Even when nearing the Zambesi, with the roar of the Falls in one’s ears, so little opening-up had hitherto been done that only an occasional peep of coming glories was vouchsafed us; hence the first glimpse of a vast stretch of country was all the more striking.  I must ask my readers to imagine the bluest of blue skies; an expanse of waving grass of a golden hue, resembling an English cornfield towards the harvest time, stretching away till it is lost in far-distant tropical vegetation of intense green, which green clearly marks the course of the winding Zambesi; again, amid this emerald verdure, patches of turquoise water, wide, smooth, unruffled, matching the heavens in its hue, are to be seen—­no touch of man’s hand in the shape of houses or chimneys to mar the effect of Nature and Nature’s colouring.  If you follow with your eyes this calm, reposeful river, now hiding itself beneath its protecting banks with their wealth of branching trees, tall cocoanut palms, and luxuriant undergrowth, now emerging like a huge blue serpent encrusted with diamonds, so brightly does the clear water sparkle in the sun, you note that it finally loses itself in a heavy, impenetrable mass of green forest.  And now for a few moments the newcomer is puzzled to account for a dense white cloud, arisen apparently from nowhere, which is resting where the forest is thickest and most verdant, now larger, then smaller, anon denser or more filmy, but never changing its place, never disappearing, while the distant thunder, to which you had almost got accustomed, strikes upon your ear and gives the explanation you are seeking.